First Boston edition, and the first edition of the description of the panorama first exhibited in the United States by Catherwood at the Panorama, in Boston in 1837. Catherwood would later exhibit this panorama which he had purchased from Robert Burford in New York City between 1838-1842 at the Broadway Panorama, or the “Catherwood Panorama” or” Catherwood Rotunda”, and in Philadelphia in 1840. Catherwood’s Panorama was one of the most popular entertainment venues in early New York.

 

       Catherwood, born in London in 1799, was a well-known architect, illustrator, and explorer, who had provided the sketches for Robert Burford’s circular panorama of Jerusalem (1835). Catherwood arrived in New York in 1836, he had traveled widely, recently completing a six-year tour of Egypt and the Middle East. Catherwood had worked for Robert Burford, the impresario of his own panorama in Leicester Square, London, where he was taught the business of popular entertainment. In between trips to Central America with John Lloyd Stephens, he went back into the entertainment business, opening his own panorama at Prince and Mercer Streets in New York. Burford exhibited the “Jerusalem” panorama in London 1835-1836, and in Edinburgh, 1836. Catherwood purchased “Jerusalem” from Burford and brought it to America, exhibiting it first in Boston, 1837, New York, 1838, and Philadelphia in 1840. The panorama, based on the plate, consisted of two wide views, one facing north and the other south. The painting was destroyed along with all of Catherwood’s other work when his New York rotunda burned down in 1842.

 

American Imprints 43483, five locations, we are aware of only one copy of this first Boston edition appearing at auction, Swann, 2020, lacking original wrappers. See Huhtamo, Erkki, Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles, (2013) p. 171, and Oettermann, Stephan, The Panorama History of a Mass Medium, (1997), pp., 113-114, 317-323.